Lacking a portable scanner with me at this time, I’m having to make do with photographing the writing sample instead

I don’t know if stormtroopers took over Tombow or if the staff there are just being remotely brain-controlled from the Death Star, but I too was contacted to receive and give away a white-and-black version of the Tombow AirPress Pen. Thanks to Tombow for providing these pens!

It also matches my car. I should give more rides to stormtroopers carrying these pens for the ultimate matching experience. More matching than a deathcage match even.

I’ve had some exposure to the AirPress before, evaluating it as a potential motorcycling pen, but I forgot to get around to actually reviewing it. And I have reviewed the similar AirPress Apro ballpoint pen. As I’ve noted before, I like the lightweight, compact body and the grippability of it—both the non-slip surface covering the whole body, and the slightly wider body itself.

I’m not sure if you can really see it, but it is snowing in the background. And foreground. And on the ground

That wider body makes it easy to hold and write with the pen even with gloves on (and in the cold, on wet paper, upside down, etc.).

Why is the arrow pointing? What does it mean???

The lanyard loop I understand. The hinged clip, we’re good. I like the grip, and the windows where you can see some of the process mechanisms that pressurize the ink cartridge. The only thing I don’t fully understand is the little plastic arrow thing on the end of the clip. I feel like it has some secret meaning or purpose and I just don’t get it.

UNDER PRESSURE, pushing down on me, pressing down on you—wait have I made this joke before

Just like the Tombow Apro AirPress, the regular AirPress ballpoint pen does really well with drawing. Each click of the pen (on the retraction actually, unless I’m mistaken) pressurizes the refill for 492 feet of writing. Is there a machine that tests these things? One robot arm holds the pen while another mechanism scrolls several hundred feet of paper by? Or is it just some probably underpaid guy writing the same word over and over until either he snaps or the ink cartridge runs out? The writing smoothness I would rank just under the supersmooth category; not butterglide skatesmoothery, but it’s still good. For the utility you get, there’s not much sacrifice of performance in terms of how the pen writes. I might loan my pen out to some LEOs I know to see how it holds up to some real field work.

What does 492 feet of writing even look like on paper? Has anyone stopped and really consciously looked at 492 feet of words?

And now, for the thanksgiveaway! Tombow has provided an extra pen for me to give away, so give it away I shall!

The rules:

Since I can only afford so much postage, I’m going to limit this giveaway to the U.S. only. Just leave one comment on this post any time between now and Cyber Monday, December 1st 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time.

One winner will be picked at random from the comments section of this post. Only one comment per person! Comments in excess of one shall be deleted. The comments will be numbered in the order they are received, i.e. the first comment is #1, the second #2, and so on. I will hand-number the entries because why not. The Random Integer Generator at random.org will be used to pick the number of the winner.

I’ll post the contest winner on Tuesday, December 2nd. Winner will have one week to email me. There’s a link to my email at the top of the right sidebar.

It has been requested that my new giant puppy dog make guest appearances much as my cat does, but she’s currently too deeply embedded in the CHEW ALL THE THINGS stage to be trusted around fine writing utensils

This pencil was the very first item I put on my JetPens wishlist nearly four years ago, when the madness was just beginning to take hold, back when more than ten dollars for any one item seemed exorbitant, luxuries beyond the comprehension of my budget. Onto the wishlist this went, a maybe-one-day dream, until to my surprise I opened the bubble mailer to see that JetPens had sent me this sample to review. Inside the clip, I see the year stamped “2006.” I think I’ll consider this both a birthday (June 24th) and belated high school graduation gift (2006). Thank you JetPens for providing this sample!

Does this remind you of a robot cigar? A high-class fancy party robot cigar?

The body is shiny aluminum, specially treated (so I’m hoping it will prove durable). The accent is rubber, like the grip. The whole thing looks fantastically executive, in spite of being a magnet for fingerprints and little debris specks.

Subtle “0.5” label in raised lettering, excellent choice

Guess what happens when you post the cap? As you push down and it snaps into place…THE LEAD ADVANCES. Either right now you’re hearing a choir of dragonfly angels singing joyful hallelujahs, or you’re thinking, “DUH, why would it not?” Hypothetical second person, it only takes one pencil in your life where that’s not the case to turn such an intuitively expected bit of design into a delightful surprise.

It looks like it’s got more ridges than a ruffled potato chip, but somehow still manages to be both comfortable and not covered in salt

If you grip low (like on the nose cone), then this design won’t suit you, but for me the grip falls right in a goldilocks zone of comfort. The rubber has just the right amount of contour, and the material is neither too smooth nor too tacky. The pencil itself has a well-balanced heft to it, with or without the cap posted. Feels like I should be penciling in some significant or substantial things.

Book me to fill out your corner-office day planner today! Starting at a zillion dollars.

Technically, there’s an eraser. Practically, I would save it for only the most dire of erasing emergencies. If lives are somehow on the line, and erasing is the only thing standing between you and certain death. The eraser is the lead stopper; to get to it, you have to unscrew the grip from the body. Remember this when the time comes.

It was foretold at the hour of your birth that one day you would save the world with a tiny eraser. Probably.

It’s lead! What more can you say? The sleeve holds the lead securely, and the cap keeps the whole stabby lead situation from escalating into puncture wounds if you’re reaching in somewhere blindly to retrieve this pencil.

Just needs a fancy matching easy-use eraser

The Tombow Zoom is a simultaneously shiny and classy mechanical pencil that seems to hit just about all the right notes. Thanks again to JetPens for providing this sample!

Thanks to an incurable case of pen-ADD, I’ve got a lot of cool pens ordered in a fit of JetPens mania, played with for a while, and then forgotten about before getting a chance to do a review—and I’m working on that! The Tombow Pfit is now benefiting from my renewed attention.

Apparently, the clip features a flat surface so it can be decorated with stickers or jewels if desired. Clearly I’ve been owning this pen all wrong. Someone hand me some adhesive decoratives.

It looks like a full-sized pen cut in half with a bright clip streamlined into the side of it. The grip-like grey section is more for looks than function, as it doesn’t seem to line up much with my grip. Overall in the looks department it fits in comfortably with other trendy hip little Japanese pens.

Pfit probably stands for “petite fit” but I will also accept “possible fit” “panther fit” and “propane-based fit” as potentially fitting answers

The clip has good clippability to it. It clips to the hard cover of my notebook, onto my lanyard, on a pocket, onto a bunch of pages (maybe not all of those at the same time) without looking too bulky.

And you can hook it on a little lanyard loop! In case you need to lash it to one thing and clip it to another and thus hold together the very fabric of your office

The cool thing about the clip is that to retract the pen, you open the clip. The pen can’t be deployed when you’ve got it clipped on a pocket, because the clip is slightly open. It’s a fun mechanism to play with—push the knock to deploy, open the clip to retract, and repeat until someone smacks the Pfit out of your hands.

Who even knows what I did with the old refill, probably bartered it to a wizard for candy

Originally, the Pfit came with some kind of 0.7mm standard ballpoint, probably similar to the Tombow OnBook. But I went on a Sharbo X refill kick (that’s what happens when you don’t just suck it up and buy something that you want) for all my mini pens that would take one, and have long since outfitted the Tombow Pfit with a Blood Red 0.4mm Sharbo X gel refill, which is still writing years after I put it in. The lines get a bit anemic in the middle sometimes, but that’s my only complaint in the writing department, and how much that issue might be due to age I can’t be sure.

No longer available in orange!

The Pfit is a fun little pen, and would make a nice out-and-about accessory for office life or a cute little gift for others. The orange clip Pfit is no longer sold at JetPens, but they do still have some jewel-tone clips available!

In honor of Hourly Comic Day, I wanted to give a little shout-out to my HCD pen of choice, the Tombow Fudenosuke twin tip brush pen.

What does it say on it?? Probably says BEST HOURLY COMIC DAY PEN YOUR EQUIVALENT OF 4.25 US DOLLARS CAN BUY

It pairs well with my Rhodia Dotpad No. 12 for the perfect quick-sketch experience.

The caps are not the most convenient things to post on each other, but you do what you can. BONUS! This picture is actually of 2 pens. I’m still waiting for the first one I bought in 2010 to die.

Though a little dark, the gray is perfect for rough sketching and shading, and the black is sufficiently dark for inking and borders. There is a little give in the brush tips, but not so much as to be unruly or unwieldy for a brush pen novice.

Old tips on the left, new on the right.

Though I would prefer a lighter gray, the big winning factor for the Tombow Fudenosuke is convenience. I only need to grab one pen and my Rhodia dotpad, no keeping up with multiple pens. The tips do wear down over time, and as they near the end they get dry, but you more than get your money’s worth before that day comes.

If I draw anything sufficiently neat this year, I’ll add it to this post! Happy Hourly Comic Day!

The only need I have for mechanical pencils anymore is when I want to psych myself into thinking I want to take a bunch of scan-tron tests. When I need pencils for drawing, I’ve been going for lead holders and wooden pencils, and I have no normal need to write with something so irredeemably smudgy as graphite. It takes something truly peculiar to make me want to go get my hands on a mechanical pencil.

Truly, something peculiar

This is the first and only grip I’ve encountered that covers every point where my hand touches the pencil. It looks a bit unbalanced, but it feels great. And inside this grip of exceptional dimensions you’ll find the most fantastic little innovation this side of the Kuru Toga.

According to JetPens, ‘OLNO’ is a play on the Japanese word “oru”, or to fold/bend. I will generously assume the pun is much more enjoyable if you know Japanese.

In addition to the snoreatorium standard method of lead advancement (a.k.a. clicking on the eraser end), the Olno allows lead access by applying pressure toward the upper part of the grip.

IT MAY BEND, BUT IT WILL NEVER BREAK! Actually don’t lay down the violence too harshly—I’m sure it will eventually break.

At first it seems unnatural, as if you’re violating the sacred trust between you and a $5 writing utensil that you shouldn’t be manipulating as if to snap in half. But once you get over that feeling and realize you’re not manhandling the pencil to pieces, it’s a pretty efficient maneuver. It’s just a slight upward squeeze of the thumb for me, and it doesn’t disrupt my grip of the pencil—intuitive stuff.

Also includes non-intuitive stuff

The only thing that doesn’t make sense here is the eraser. The semi-circle clip-like object doesn’t keep the pencil from rolling away if it has any momentum going. And you can’t really clip it to anything because it pops right off—that’s where the eraser is hiding.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

Standard mechanical pencil-sized eraser, but in a less than convenient format. You can smush it in upside down, and it will stay put—as long as you don’t actually use it. Then it pops right out. Pretty sure this is bad for the plastic.

One day I will learn how to make fine, snobbish distinctions so as to be like a wine connoisseur of pencil leads. For now it’s pretty much THIS WRITES or THIS DOESN’T WRITE WHICH MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE LEAD ALWAYS WRITES

Just leave the eraser secured in the top (for emergencies) and use a separate eraser. Otherwise you’ve got an unwieldy little choking hazard on your hands. Eraser aside (or capside), it’s a neat little treat to write with. No problems with the lead or general use of the pencil.

Public Service Announcement: the lead goes in here

For your general reference, to refill the lead, pinch at the top of the grip and the bottom of the clear part and twist the two apart. Don’t worry—the pencil is designed so that the little red-orange bit doesn’t fall out.

Without opposable thumbs or a written system of language, Tobi has a hard time using the Tombow Olno pencil.

Another goody courtesy Brad at JetPens: the Tombow OnBook ballpoint pen! My curiosity had been piqued by the pseudo-gimmicky innovation of this pen for quite some time, but I resisted tossing it on my JetPens Wish List for serious consideration—until they busted out a turquoise model. Turquoise makes everything better.

It’s a nicely constructed little number. I am both baffled and enchanted by its design, a merger of minimalism and peculiar, appealing shapes.

This is not normal. Dali's melted clocks would write with a pen like this.

Also made of adorable shapes. I can't think of a shape I'd find friendlier.

But I can’t quite figure out how I want to hold this pen. There are a lot of awkward/mildly uncomfortable ways to wrap your fingers around this plastic construction, due to the two rounded ridges on the flat side of the pen. Thanks to my natural grip, it seems like some part of my hand is always pressing into one ridge or the other. Using the “ideal” pliers grip seems better, but we should know by now that, without firmly molded guiding grips, “ideal pliers” is practically a pipe dream for me.

Note that little dot. It will become very important if you ever want to undeploy the pen.

I am also a bit confounded by the design decision that, instead of retracting the tip by re-clicking the plunger, you have to press in that little dot. If you have hard, sharp, bony fingers then it’s probably no big deal, but if you have squishy fingers, it is inconveniently slightly more difficult than necessary to push the button in far enough to release and retract the pen. Aesthetically, I love the dot. Practically, I wish it weren’t the only retraction method.

How does it do being on books? For that, I’m pretty pleased.

Off book, ONBOOK

The flare-up at the end of the clip makes it easier to slip on, but doesn’t flare up so much that it digs into your book (especially important if you’re clipping it on the cover, rather than the spine). Stays on nicely without death-gripping. If you want to get your OCPD on (I know I am tempted to), you might complain that there is a mere 2mm protrusion of cap above the clip, preventing the pen’s profile from being perfectly flush with the book; but it’s not so much that it’ll be getting knocked around. The flattish side of the pen rests nicely against both covers and spines, so much so that I think it makes up for that 2mm protrusion. Wait, am I really griping about 2mm?

Forget 2mm; let's talk about 0.7mm

It writes decently; not phenomenally convert-strangers-on-the-street-into-using-this-pen smooth (a.k.a. Jetstream butter-smooth), but it’s a far cry from the frozen black molasses that passes for ink in cheap ballpoints. If I had to write a bunch with this pen, I would probably get more tired of the grip before I would get fed up with the ink. Low instances of ballpoint-ink-blobbing, and it writes easily with very little pressure; just generally the sort of nice performance that I think a standard ballpoint pen should give.

The only way this could get any more handy is if the pen body were made out of tanned hand leather. But that would be unsellably weird.

I’m not gonna sit down and write out the Next Great American Grocery List, pages 1 through 4098, using this pen. But I think it’s perfect for keeping on the spine or cover of a book/journal/calendar/planner/assemblage of bound paper, so as to have a pen handy for jotting down notes and ideas, and other esoteric margin scribblings.

It also comes in other colors, if, for some insane and unfathomable reason, you don’t like turquoise.

Round 1, because all of these pens will need to be re-evaluated again after more motorcycling and abuse. These are just the results from a single 4-day motorcycle trip.

You will recall the intended contenders:

The Fisher Space Pen I've tested extensively before. It (or more accurately, a similar model not pictured above) was my default motorcycle pen. That's the standard to beat.

I switched from the basic bullet-style Space pen to one with a Maglite attached both for functionality (hey! I have a pen AND a flashlight! I’m a wizard!) and for the simple fact that I had a hard time finding the slippery little standard Space Pen in my jacket pocket. The clip my standard Space Pen came with is of no help; it has come off so many times in bags and pockets that its whereabouts currently remain unknown. But I rarely want to pull the whole pen-and-flashlight operation out of my pocket; doing so tends to launch a cascade of receipts to the ground. Using the Space Pen with no cap on, it’s too small to comfortably wield and is a bit slippery. A different pen was needed. Let’s take a look at the Fuel Log from my trip and get into the good and bad with each of these pens.

Yes, this is a Moleskine info book. In spite of my loathing of this paper, it /is/ conveniently pre-tabbed; something I'm far too lazy to do to a book with good paper.

Riding over to meet up with my family Thursday evening I used my Space Pen, just for reference.

The most ineffective nunchucks I own

Day One featured use of the Tombow Airpress.

Designed for rugged Japanese construction workers. And also me.

What I like: pen is lightweight, has a decently sturdy and secure clip, compact body, satisfying plunger mechanism. The whole surface of the body is a kind of non-slip rubber, and there’s a lanyard clip. There are a lot of little features here. And it’s not so expensive that I’d be outlandishly upset at losing this off the side of a mountain.

What I don’t like: I want the clip to be even sturdier. Sturdy enough that I feel like I could ride with it clipped in my pocket, instead of zipped securely away. And what is that black arrow piece on the clip for? It confounds me.

Judgment: I wonder how much abuse it will stand up to. I worry it would probably melt if I accidentally dropped it on the motorcycle and it hit something hot. At the same time, I think it has the right kind of look and function for what I need it for. Definitely one to keep around.

Day two I brought out the Lamy Pico.

I have a lot to say about this one

What I like: Design, design, design. The size is fantastically compact, very low-profile in the pocket, but expands to a full-size pen:

Looks pretty cool, right?

This pen has that screaming jet-black aesthetic you expect from motorcycle things. It’s an item where, eventually, you’ll pull it out to write something down and get asked about it. The body is thick, which makes it easier to hold with gloves on, and it has a nice weight to give it presence.

What I don’t like about the design: one, there have been several times where I pushed the end in but didn’t push it in enough to get the mechanism to catch. You don’t look very cool when you have to push the end of your pen any more than once to get pen functionality. Two: no clip. What Lamy could do, however, is take that little silver logo bit and make it out of a powerful magnet, with the word “LAMY” recessed into the metal. Then you could at least magnetically clip the pen to your bike. I say this because I drove halfway to Asheville with a magnetic pocket tire pressure gauge on the side of my bike, and did not notice till I stopped for gas and saw it was still there. Just a thought.

What I really don’t like: The ballpoint cartridge is crap. I don’t think there was a single time where I started to write with it that it wanted to write right off the bat. Which brings me to another thing I really don’t like: this pen is ludicrously expensive for a ballpoint pen, especially one with a shoddy ballpoint cartridge. And being so pricey, I think I’d have a small heart attack if I lost this pen.

Judgment: The pen is made to look cool and feel cool, but not actually be worth more than a Bic disposable in terms of writing performance. Unfortunately, the cartridge for the pen is oddly shaped, so I’m not sure if we’ll be able to find a better cartridge to hack into the pen to make the price worthwhile. Accept this pen as a gift, but don’t buy one for yourself.

Day Three I intended to use the Uni Power Tank, but first ended up using my Lamy Vista EF nib with Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses (I wanted to see how a fountain pen would do in my pocket on a hot summer day). Fountain pen ink on Moleskine paper was as suboptimal as you’d expect, but I otherwise saw no difference in performance of the pen. What I really liked about the Lamy Vista was the clip.

I think this clip alone is worth the cost of an entire Lamy Pico

The way the end bevels up makes it super easy to slip onto a pocket, but the way the rest of the clip hugs the barrel makes it reassuringly secure. I rode with the Vista clipped upright in an unzipped pocket and had no worries about it flying away.

Alas, Day Three was a short ride; I only fueled up once, so I had to use the Uni Power Tank to note my mileage at the end of the day.

Is the grip made of tires? It might as well be. Nothing is gonna slip on that grip; it is diametrically opposed to the common banana peel. They are like matter and anti-matter; touching the grip of a Uni Power Tank to a grounded banana peel could destroy the universe.

What I like: writes beautifully every time, solid and dark. Comes out looking very fine for an 0.7mm, which I am a fan of. I’d say, of the bunch, the Uni Power Tank has the unique distinction of both writing the best, and being the most inexpensive. I could stand at an overlook and throw dozens of these pens into a ravine and STILL buy more because it would be a pen worth having. And the grip is pretty neat.

What I don’t like: while it’s well designed for a great, inexpensive pen, I want something with a bit more oomph and dollar signs in the design. I want to put a little more money down and have a designated Motorcycle Pen. If we could put the insides of a Uni Power Tank inside the Lamy Pico, and put the Lamy Vista’s clip on all that, then we’d have exactly what I want. At the very least, I’d like a pen that’s a little shorter than the Power Tank, and with some kind of usable clip in place of the standard plastic snap-off affair.

Judgment: This pen is cheap enough and writes well enough in multiple conditions that I think it’s worth keeping a few in my saddlebags. It writes well enough to be the primary pen, but there’s a bit more I’d like from the aesthetic.

Day four I don’t remember what pen I used, unfortunately (I didn’t write down which pen I was using at the time, oops). Instead, I’ll wrap this up by noting that I didn’t get a chance to try the Sharpie pen :( and I’d like to give an honorable mention to the Ohto Capstick. The Ohto Capstick writes wonderfully and has an excellent, compact design, but if I lose the cap…

The ingenious retracting feature makes the cap LITERALLY INDISPENSABLE; you lose the cap, you might as well switch to another pen.

I can’t have my primary pen contain an integral part that’s sooo easy to lose.

As it stands, every one of the four main pens I tested (Airpress, Pico, Vista, and Power Tank) had enough good things going for them to save them from total expulsion, but no pen had everything I was looking for. As it stands, I’ll probably work on a rotation of these main four (perhaps getting my hands on an EF white body Lamy Safari with Noodler’s Polar Blue, and trying to jam every tiny cartridge under the sun into the Pico until I find something better or give up in despair), plus perhaps a nice orange-body Ohto Pieni in lieu of the Capstick. After a year of abuse, I’ll do an update to see which pens have ultimately fared better than the others. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’ll add them in to the rotation!